Shattered Dreams

I've defended Barry Bonds many times on OP before, but this time, there's no need to.  Well, let me rephrase that: there's no reason to defend him, because there's no reason to blame him for hurting baseball. 

Let's get this straight: Barry Bonds didn't hurt baseball.  Baseball hurt baseball. 

You're going to call me a Bonds apologist, even though I wouldn't dream of apologizing for what Bonds did.  What he did was morally wrong, reprehensible and perhaps even illegal in a court of law - assuming the allegations in this new book are true.  I'd say I'm about 85% convinced that they are. 

I called this entry "Shattered Dreams" for a reason. Not in reference to when Goldust places his opponent in the corner, hooks his legs under the ropes and kicks him in the groin region.  No, it's because a lot of people are having their baseball illusions shattered.  I feel sorry for them.

Baseball fans tend to hold integrity and statistics in high esteem.  They, unlike fans of almost any other sport, revere the best players in their game.  They place their stats on a pedestal, and are very hostile towards anything that would threaten this image.

This despite the fact that there is little, if any, empirical or anecdotal evidence to support these notions of integrity. 

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Baseball has never been about pure competition.  From the Chicago White Sox scandal of the early 20th century (I refuse to use the name "Black Sox") to baseball's dubious history of longstanding segregation to the current steroid era, the league and its players have chosen to be anything but clean.  Race has played, and continues to play, a very large flashpoint for the ugly side of baseball.  Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa never received death threats when they were on the verge of breaking baseball's single-season home run record.  Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds did. 

In defense of Roger Maris, the white former single-season home run king, people hated him for chasing the Babe.  But to the best of my knowledge, nobody threatened his life of the lives of his family memebers the way they did with Bonds and Aaron. 

As for Babe Ruth, he played during another infamous baseball period: segregation.  This excellent, recent ESPN article re-examines this issue, asking a simple question: which was worse for the game, steroids or segregation?  Nobody knows how good the Negro Leagues were, but the consenus is that many of the world's best baseball players played there for decades.  Would the Babe have stood out so much in a league with African-American and Latino players?  We'll never know. 

Here is an excerpt from the piece: "And now its record books are filled with feats of two separate but evil eras. Of the 21 players with 500 career home runs, nine played at least five seasons in eras either lily-white or darkened by drugs. The same can be said for 11 of the all-time top 21 in RBI.

As Bonds comes closer to the Bambino, so do their respective times.

When Bonds hits 715, it shouldn't be received as making a mockery of a virtuous past. Unless you -- yes, you -- find steroids more intolerable than segregation, that is."

It's an interesting point, isn't it?  Contrast pro baseball with the NFL, which was segregated only between 1933 and 1946.  Baseball ended segregation one year later, but had been Jim-Crowed all the way up to that point.  NFL fans understand that a lot of athletes may be juiced, but they don't care nearly as much.  For one thing, the records aren't as meaningful; for another, the NFL has long led the way in professional sports when it comes to drug testing.  Baseball never made such an honest attempt.

And now baseball must suffer the consequences.

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Bill Simmons recently expressed similar views in his mailbag, responding to the reader question: "I'm sorry, but does Keith Olbermann know what he's saying when he says that unless Barry Bonds sues, his records will be expunged? Are you kidding me? If he sues, he has every single leg to stand on. At no point were steroids illegal in baseball until after he had played all of his "steroid-enhanced seasons." Although I am a Giants fan, every point I have made is legally correct. According to the new book, Bonds was still a first-ballot Hall of Famer before '98. Are you telling me that with or without drugs he still wasn't?
-- Cameron, Hermosa Beach, Calif.

SG: I couldn't agree more. What Bonds did made him unheroic and unlikable, but he wasn't a cheater. He took advantage of a bad system and maximized all the loopholes that were already in place -- loopholes that existed because the commissioner's office and players' union were more than happy to look the other way while the offensive explosion in the late-'90s rejuvenated the nation's interest in baseball. Sure, Bonds ruined his body and his reputation in the process, and he'll be lucky to make it to 60 years old, and he's going to be remembered as the Hall of Fame Bad Guy of his generation … but it's tough to blame someone for breaking the rules when nobody was policing those same rules. His records should stay."

I also couldn't agree more.  Nobody is saying Bonds is a hero.  Nobody is saying Bonds isn't an asshole.  Very few, if anybody is even saying that he didn't use drugs.  But rules are rules...and, for better or worse, baseball is baseball.  The past cannot be altered without making some very skewed decisions.  All the sport can do is clean up for the future.  Then perhaps one day the game will actually be the bastion if integrity that everyone likes to pretend it is today...or make believe it was yesterday. 

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